Resources for Elementary School Teachers

Below is a list of links to various tools and resources that may be helpful in implementing technology into classroom lessons. Please feel free to continue to add to the list as you come across your own that are tried-and-tested and that you feel may be useful to other teachers.

General Resources

RM Easiteach - wiki with TONS of pre-made Easiteach activities/lessons for all grade levels and activities - click around!!
Spezify : A Visual Search Engine - Better than Google for younger students
Grokker - offers both map and cluster results
Kartoo - visual search shows relationships
Quintura - tag clouds suggest keywords and categories
Soople - busts out Google's features
Jux2 - compare Google, Yahoo, and MSN with One Search
Digital Story Telling - a wiki with a ist of how-to resources on using programs such as Audacity, Kidpix, Keynote, MovieMaker, VoiceThread, Photostory, etc. Check these out!

Math Lessons

Least Common Multiples - Smartboard game for least common multiples
Khan Academy - Video lessons of nearly any grade/level of mathematical concept

Science

Planets for Kids - Good planet site for younger students
NASA - Bring NASA into your classroom
Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears - online magazine for K-5 educators integrating science, complete with podcasts and lots of graphics
Khan Academy - Video lessons of many scientific concepts

Reading

Skype an Author - Students ever bored with reading or stories? Skype a book's author into your classroom to talk with your students directly. This blog is a place where you can find authors who will do just that. We successfully did this last year in 9th grade where students had the opportunity to interact with an author via the bigscreen whiteboard... very cool!
Clusty - clustered search with vocabulary and category supports

Social Studies

ePals - FANTASTIC site for younger students to explore rich media AND connect with students in other classrooms and other parts of the world. Kid-friendly and very digitally safe.

Differentiating for Multiple Needs/Intelligences

Natural Reader - free text-to-speech software program which converts any written text to speech (Word, pdf, websites, emails)
Click,Speak - a free Firefox extension that reads the Internet and highlights phrases and sentences as it reads
Talklets - make any website talk, embed in your website, blog or wiki
iSpeech - converts web pages to audio.
Kartoo - visual search shows relationships

Other Cool Stuff - Just for Fun

Snowflakes - Kids can cut their own snowflakes on the computer -- Very COOL!